Patrick Kinna

Patrick Kinna, who died on March 14 aged 95, was Winston Churchill's
confidential assistant during the Second World War and saw the great man in
some of his most private moments.

Patrick Kinna (on the left) with Churchill and Stalin in Moscow, August 1942

8:09PM GMT 18 Mar 2009

Kinna was recommended to Churchill by staff surrounding the Duke of Windsor, whose confidential clerk he had been while the Duke was serving as a member of the British military mission in Paris. From 1940 to 1945 his tiny, trim figure rarely left the Prime Minister's side, pencil and shorthand pad ever at the ready.

At Christmas 1941, while Churchill was staying at the White House, Kinna was summoned to take dictation by the prime minister, who was soaking in his bathtub, planning the speech he would make to Congress on Boxing Day. Finding the muse, Churchill stomped in and out of the tub, evading the ministrations of a valet with a bath-towel.

As the prime minister paced the room "completely starkers", Kinna recalled, there was a knock on the door and Churchill went to open it. It was Roosevelt in his wheelchair. Mortified at finding his guest with nothing on, the president prepared to make his excuses, but was prevented by Churchill. "Oh no, no, Mr President," he said. "As you can see, I have nothing to hide from you."

The youngest of eight children, Patrick Francis Kinna was born in south London on September 5 1913. His father, Captain Thomas Kinna, had been decorated for his part in the relief of Ladysmith, during the Boer War. After leaving school Patrick took a course in shorthand and typing, then joined Barclays bank as a clerk while deliberating whether to be a journalist or a skating instructor (he had trained with the ice-skating star Belita).

As war threatened he joined the reserves, preferring the prospect of active service to a possible posting to "the Catering Corps, washing dishes". But because of his skills as a clerk (with his 150 words per minute at shorthand and 90 wpm typing, he had won the All-England championship for secretarial speeds), he spent only one night in a tent on the Aldershot parade ground before being assigned to the Intelligence Corps and posted to Paris as clerk to Major-General HRH the Duke of Windsor.

Kinna, who served the Duke for just under a year, found him "a nice person, full of smiles", though he was somewhat relieved that he never had to meet Wallis Simpson, about whom he had heard "rumours". One of his duties was to ensure that the Duke never took a single piece of paper home, where it might fall into the hands of the Duchess.

As the Germans drew near to the city they were ordered to evacuate. They spent a day destroying secret documents before the Duke was spirited to safety. Kinna was left to hitchhike to the French coast to find a ship home.

Offered a lift by a general and two staff officers, Kinna sat in the front of the car, with a rifle between his knees which was pointing at the general's head. The general asked if the safety catch was on, and Kinna – who had received no arms training – replied that he had no idea. The car was stopped, and the general examined the weapon to find that the catch was not engaged and there was a live bullet up the spout. Kinna never forgot the dressing-down he received.

Back in England, Kinna got a telephone call from 10 Downing Street: "They said, 'The prime minister wants to see Roosevelt in the mid-Atlantic. He needs you to go with him as clerk.'" In the battleship on the outward journey Kinna's duties mainly involved trying to discourage the sailors from whistling, a noise Churchill could never abide. But once Churchill and Roosevelt got down to business and started negotiating the Atlantic Charter, there was no let-up: "I was terribly busy all the time. I spent days and days typing."

Shortly after the expedition returned to Britain, Kinna received another call from Downing Street to say that Churchill had been so impressed with his work that he wanted him to join his staff. From then on, Kinna accompanied Churchill on all his trips abroad.

Some accounts suggest that Churchill was initially charmed by Joseph Stalin, but that was not Kinna's impression. After their first encounter in Moscow, Kinna recalled Churchill storming back into the office they had been given at the Kremlin, saying he wanted to dictate a telegram to Whitehall. "I have just had a most terrible meeting with this terrible man Stalin... evil and dreadful," he began. "May I remind you, Prime Minister," interrupted the British ambassador, "that all these rooms have been wired and Stalin will hear every word you said."

The next morning, though it was obvious that Stalin had heard, he was "very nice and polite and sweet", Kinna recalled: "He couldn't afford to tell Winston to buzz off." Later on, on his return from the Yalta conference, Kinna recalled that Churchill asked to have his clothes fumigated, imagining that they had acquired some unwelcome residents.

Churchill had a reputation for being brusque and inconsiderate with his staff, but Kinna recalled him as "basically very kind", though if he was in full flight "nothing else mattered and politeness didn't come into it". Secretaries were instructed never to ask Churchill to repeat himself. As his dictation was fast and fluent, this was difficult, but Kinna made sure such episodes were kept to a minimum.

After the general election of 1945, Churchill, now leader of the opposition, asked Kinna if he would stay on as his private secretary. But Kinna had had enough of long hours – Churchill habitually worked past midnight – and declined. Magnanimous in defeat, Churchill sent a glowing testimonial: "He [Kinna] is a man of exceptional diligence, firmness of character and fidelity," and nominated him for an MBE.

The two men kept in touch and always exchanged white pelargoniums on their birthdays. After Churchill died, Lady Churchill sent a chauffeur to Kinna's home with a present of a set of elegant tea tables used by her husband.

Meanwhile, news of Kinna's skills had reached the ears of Ernest Bevin, now foreign secretary. "If he was good enough for Winston, he's good enough for me," Bevin is supposed to have said. Kinna worked with Bevin until his death in 1951, and in 1991 he presented a bronze bust by Douglas Robertson Bisset of his former boss to the Foreign Office, where it has pride of place on the grand staircase.

Kinna's subsequent career was a "bit of an anticlimax". In the early 1950s he joined the timber firm Montague Meyer, rising to personnel director. He retired in his sixtieth year and went to live with his sister Gladys in Brighton, making occasional outings to events commemorating the lives of the great men for whom he had worked. In 2000 he was welcomed on board the American destroyer Winston S Churchill at the International Festival of the Sea in Portsmouth. In 2005 he stood alongside the Queen at the opening ceremony of the new Whitehall museum devoted to the great man. He also gave lectures, donating the fees to charity.